Tech camps bring parents, children closer

Sunday

Oct 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

The Associated Press

BURLINGHAM, N.Y. - For the third straight summer, Stacey Weiss will be sending her 11-year-old twin boys to Camp Echo in Burlingham, N.Y. But even though they'll be away for eight weeks, Weiss can keep tabs on her children through photos on the camp Web site.

"I really love the Web site. It adds comfort to a parent when your child is away," said the Woodcliff Lakes, N.J., resident, who will be logging on to the password-protected site to find out what her twins are up to this summer.

Over the past few years, a growing number of camps have tapped to the expertise of Internet startup businesses for e-mail services, online videos and photos to help parents stay in touch with their children. Companies like Bunk1.com, Thriva LLC (which operates eCamp and CampRegister), Dial M For Mercury Inc. and Camp Channel Inc., say such tools are helping camps market themselves to parents at a time when anxiety about children's safety is high in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"Camps are looking more and more at technology as a means to assuage parents' fear," said Paul Fisher, president and CEO of Dial M For Mercury Inc., which installs cameras to stream video to camps' Web sites. This summer, it's offering camp clients an Internet-based automated telephone messaging service.

So far, such services appear to be making parents more comfortable writing checks for summer camp. Deb Bialescki, senior researcher at Martinsville, Ind.-based American Camp Association, reports a general rise in camp enrollment after the $20 billion industry suffered two consecutive summers of enrollment declines following the terrorist attacks in 2001. The trade association, which comprises 7,000 camp professionals, estimates an average increase in enrollment of 1 percent to 3 percent for the year over the same period of 2005.

This summer, Peg Smith, CEO of American Camp Association, believes camps will eventually be supplying podcasts, downloadable audio files similar to radio programs. "That's the next natural evolution," she said.

Some camps operate their own Web sites, but many have turned to Internet companies with expertise in video formatting and other areas for better sound and visual quality. Ari Ackerman, founder and CEO of bunk1net.com, said some clients do their own videos, but send the company clips for formatting on the Web.

Meanwhile, companies like bunk1net.com and ecamp.net offer systems to help parents send e-mail to the camps' Web site for their children.

Although the technology allows parents to communicate with their children, it also might make some parents a little obsessive, poring over photos as they worry about their children, or trying to constantly stay in touch with their kids. Until the arrival of the Internet and cell phones, children tended to call home from camp only about once a week.

Dr. Christopher Thurber, a clinical psychologist at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., and consultant to camp operators, said some camps now allow children to bring laptop computers and cell phones with them. That's a bad idea, he said.

"Camps were originally created to provide a different experience than (children) receive the other 10 months of the year. The more technology you add, the less special and unique the experience becomes," Thurber said.

Weiss acknowledges that in the past, she tended to look obsessively at her children's camp photos online. She's getting better at not doing that.

"You can't analyze over every single snapshot," said Weiss. Still, she, along with her husband Eric, plan to e-mail her sons, Benjamin and Alexander, each night while they're away.

The new technology can make it harder for camp directors like Sandy Cohen of Eagle River, Wis.-based Camp Marimeta, which posts about 60 photos daily of campers on its Web site during the summer season.

"I get calls from parents who are concerned that their child didn't look happy in the photos," he said.

Cohen is thinking about having streaming online video, but he does get concerned about how much information should be available

That has led startups like bunk1.com to be more sensitive.

"Whatever we do, we try to make it as unobtrusive as possible," said Ackerman of bunk1net.com, which now has 2,000 camp clients, primarily in the United States.

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